From Trio to Solo
by Arual-san
Summary: Have a thought over what happened to our dear Fire Nation princess after From Solo to Trio? So did I. A second sequel to From Solo to Trio told from Azula's POV.
1. Chapter 1

Ha, ha, ha! I thought I'd finally escaped bad weather messing with my plans when I went vacationing with my man Joel to Cancun but we got rained on today! Our _last_ day! Waaah! Oh well, got plenty of sweet stuff, pics, and memories so I'm happy and it gave me some free time to type up this first chapter for my new story, oh and sorry if I'm being lazy with the title 'cuz that's like my least favorite part of writing, thinking up titles. Bleh.

Here's hoping I can pull off a decent Azula. Her personality is so different from my own so this will be a challenge for me I'm sure.

Happy reading!

Arual-san

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Between the blue sky long lengths of clouds stretched like cotton to as far as their elasticity would reach and below laid a dry and reedy meadow with no animals to be seen for miles. A place void of steady rain and thus a poor hunting ground for birds of prey, the small Fire Nation balloon was without even that small bit of feathered traffic in its path.

With no Fire Nation army, no servants or palanquin carriers, no Mai or Ty Lee, Princess Azula was alone.

All that had broken up the silence of her solo journey was the occasional gust of wind as if to show that it was not dead as all but one of its masters were and the steady burning of the coals of the balloon's stove. Not by her own will, Azula herself randomly got caught up in a coughing fit.

"Filthy peasant," she cursed beneath her breath of Katara as she cradled her blue flame closer to her huddled body in the corner of the balloon. It was by the water peasant's doing, hers, the blind girl's, and Azula's own brother, that Azula had not even the proper outdoor attire to brave the colder the air the higher the balloon sailed. The Kyoshi Warrior uniform had not been her threads of choice but it served Azula's purpose to conceal her identity yet again, this time from her own nation.

Clothed in only her white under-robes, she wanted for the long dead Avatar's clothing now, if only not to waste extra energy on heating herself. She wanted for a blanket or extra food that she, among other things, had unfortunately under-packed in her lack of experience packing for herself.

Her will was unshakeable as it had ever been but her body needed its native element to survive, especially that the cold was only prolonging her sickness. Azula cradled that flame ever closer, almost tenderly, to that alive yet not alive thing kinder than she had ever been to a real person.

The air chilled her but even with her hotter than average flame it was no cure-all to her plight. Where ever she pulled the flame closest, other neglected areas soon became numb with the cold. It was a never-ending cycle moving that flame from place to place to keep warm but it kept her occupied in some small way when her course was dead-on straight for the next forty miles.

Somehow, though the incoming flight had been the same solo ride, in the returning flight that Azula was alone again seemed to press in on her so much more. She had come with a mission and now that that mission was completed what awaited her was a very displeased Fire Lord.

She flicked her fingers round the flame with some amount of fierceness, quickly expelling any form of tenderness. What had possessed her to do it, to stick her head out for her no-good mother? Azula had thought she'd had a good answer while caught in the tides of her fever-ridden dreams but now, in rare form, was she unsure why it was she had landed herself in this balloon when right now she could be sitting down to a tray of fresh fruits in her private chambers.

She'd deliberated over it a while true, what to over her mother's sentence, but still she had made that one pivotal turn to the loading docks rather than obey her father's orders, she had still pasted that phony, blinding bright smile on in her disguise on seeing her enemies while nursing an almost overwhelming desire to strike them down for their interference, to rain down a blast of flames onto Zuko's head once he'd been fool enough to turn his back to the so-called Kyoshi Warrior and erase the blight on their proud family tree once and for all.

There had been so many chances in that battle to take any one of them down.

She hadn't done it.

"Did I need a _hug_?" she scoffed quietly, though more inside her head than out.

She could almost see Ty Lee there beside her taking her up on that. It had been the "medicine" her mother had been so willing to give. Ridiculous.

But as ridiculous as it was, as frustrated as she was the situation she had inflicted upon herself both in current and what was to come, Azula threw away her flame, killing it.

She'd only desired an hour, a measly hour would have sufficed! Then Zuko could have had Mother now and forever and Azula would have been rid of these thoughts that weighed her down so! Thoughts that Zuko, Katara, and Toph had waited outside that cave with fire in their blood had tainted her reunion with her mother, made her so very bitter that it overshadowed anything else she would have considered voicing aloud. She hadn't the power over her imprisonment then, over the direction things would have gone from there. That power had lay with the rebel friends and her brother.

Zuko…he had his new traitor friends, he already had so much, why-!?

"Had so _much_?" Azula repeated and her lips turned wickedly at the thought. What did Zuko have? A revoked title and a mutilated face? A reservation in the deepest, foulest dungeons the Fire Nation had to offer?

She made a mental note to make him suffer the most out of them all when they were captured for making her rethink herself, even for a mere couple moments. That would do much to make up for what she had to go through at present.

Azula sailed on through the air for several minutes more, the time blurred in that there was nothing to do, that the scenery never changed. Even Mai off in one of the corners sitting with little more life than the stove Azula was manning would have been better than this.

Mai and Ty Lee…the thought of them made a flash of anger surge through Azula's senses, made her want to punish them personally for betraying her, thoughts she'd thought countless times before. A passing breeze stole her breath for a moment and she began coughing once more.

Their prison wasn't far. She had been able to disguise her less than perfect state at the fortress…

Her hand didn't even move to turn the rudder. In a way she couldn't explain Azula _didn't_ want to see them just as much as she did. She didn't allow herself to think on that matter further but instead reflected that she couldn't visit that prison anyway, not after abandoning her post after a direct order from the Fire Lord, not after she, second only to the Fire Lord himself, disappeared. Her father would be bound to send out search parties for her to bring her back and most certainly not out of the role of a concerned parent to his remaining daughter.

Azula had a stray wonder if it had crossed any of the minds of the Avatar's group of three over how severely she would be punished when she returned home even when she came to Fire Lord Ozai with a perfectly plausible lie over her previous whereabouts. Punishment wasn't anything she couldn't handle though and handle with honor. Even a hint of her enemies' misplaced pity would have even more unbearable than her lingering sickness and the humiliation of allowing herself to get captured because of that.

Thinking of that servant's sickness, her hand wandered down to her waist where the adjoining rash had been the most severe. Her life was secured, far from the all too real danger it had been in only several days previously, the rash had lost its angry red flush but the skin there retained its bumpy texture. Her illness was dying as the Water Tribe girl had said but the cough and the heat on her forehead was going a long way to continue making her miserable.

Any other night, a night like the one she and her friends had been tracing the Avatar's path from the clumps of fur the bison left behind, there would have been someone else to man the controls, to fuel the vehicle. She would have been in a nice, warm bunker getting her beauty sleep, dreaming of taking down the world's last hope and giving the Fire Nation license to reign supreme over all as it should be. Even with the labor divided between three she'd have still gotten proper rest and recuperation.

Azula had already gone four hours flying as she did and she was sure she could go another four before she would need to land the balloon to get some sleep in.

So confident in that and underestimating the sickness she'd never before experienced, she allowed her eyes to droop. She could still see both near and far. The dark was not yet too thick.

They had always been with her, Mai and Ty Lee, that she could almost see them there with her now: Ty Lee at the front like a figurehead leaning out just as much as she could to take in all that they passed with the much different aerial view, Mai there in the corner as she had imagined before.

She wouldn't have been cold or hungry.

She wouldn't have been alone.

Hadn't she the princess been the obvious choice over her exiled brother back at the Boiling Rock? Azula had had the power, the prestige, the authority over anyone else and Mai and Ty Lee were her very closest friends and allies since birth and yet…and yet they had turned on her. They had turned on her and with such little hesitation and for Zuko, Zuko who was living the life of a traitor and a beggar.

Mai had a sharp wit and, despite her deliriously cheery attitude, Ty Lee had a brain in her as well so Azula couldn't just write it off just like that, no, thoughts of her friends plagued her without end. Why had they done it? She didn't understand; even if she had racked her mind for the reason the whole rest of her journey she couldn't see herself coming any nearer to the answer.

In the direst of times they had chosen Zuko and she could no longer place trust in them.

"I can't," she started, hardly aware that she was speaking the words, "I can't trust…_anyone_."

Not a second after she had thought that thought the basket had dipped altitude just low enough to scrape the tops a forest of tall trees and the jolt snapped Azula awake in a hurry. She'd only closed her eyes for a few seconds she thought when it had really been a few minutes.

With a harsh push Azula fired a blast of fire into the stove to gain height fast. The effect wasn't as immediate as she would have liked and she had to blast a number of tree tops to keep them from poking holes in her transport, namely the balloon over the basket where one poke would amount to an unavoidable crash landing. She jumped all over the balloon firing tiny, precise darts that would melt through wood just as potent as magma and branches and leaves fell from all around. All the while as the balloon rose Azula fired and although she couldn't spare it from every nick and scrape she managed to keep the balloon without a scratch and the basket from getting stuck like an overgrown bird's nest.

With her superior skills Azula hadn't been in any sort of danger but all the same the jolt had woken her from a very inopportune time to take a nap. As she'd thought previously she could've normally gone another four hours, normally if she could trade off in shifts, if she wasn't ill. This wasn't a normal time.

For so many long hours she had taken in the landscape without really taking anything thing in. She couldn't delay any longer. The next village she spotted would be her landing point.


	2. Chapter 2

Not needing to call any undue attention by landing her ride in the middle of the village, Azula parked the balloon in the nearby forest and covered it with leaves. She packed her few possessions into a small satchel, whipped it onto her back and hiked the rest of the way. The darkness of night had thickened so that she could no longer fly anyway.

Night birds hooted and crickets chirped sweet melodies but Azula stormed past, unaffected and desiring of silence. The moonlight streaming through the leaves above, the decades of ivy pouring down the edge of the nearby cliff, none of it held any beauty to her, it was just another length of distance to pass.

Though she expected it she was never completely prepared for when the daze from her fever set in after the hike that wouldn't even have winded her before. Things blurred like she was an old, old woman losing her sight and she had to stop to rest more often than she would have liked.

Azula could see the village below in the lower valley.

"Almost," she said aloud though she spoke to no one but her own weakened legs below her and all they did was shake slightly for more rest.

She stepped forward and the ground seemed to jump. She swayed on the spot like she'd had too much to drink and after a moment steadied herself.

Weary, Azula looked at the ground before her and stared until it became less blurry. Memorizing the steps to take for a few yards, she shut her eyes for some small bit of peace and continued on.

She trudged past the front gates of the town and found that the streets were bare just like it should be in the dead of night. Left and right were general stores and open markets but she walked on looking for some sort of place that she could bed down for the night in the insignificant village but even the local inn was locked until morning. There were no other customers up as late as she.

That didn't mean the option of a warm bed was out of reach. Surely the place had a back door she could slip through. She rounded the building through the back alleys. There huddled in a corner, whispering and chuckling mischievous chuckles, were the first other people Azula had come across in the village however whatever it was they were doing she couldn't care less about. She tried the door: locked. She could have gotten through nonetheless but did not try since she still thought it best to play incognito.

Waking the peasants to cater to their princess would have been enjoyable but no, she could not.

"What's a pretty little thing like you doing out here so very late?"

Azula didn't turn and grace the man from the group with eye contact.

"Not nice to be disrespecting your elders like that, girly," the man continued and Azula could hear a number of weapons being drawn. "Got any money you could spare from those pajamas?"

Still turned her eyes drooped low in a terribly bored look reminiscent of Mai. It wasn't enough that she had to get captured, her clothes stolen and sick in the middle of nowhere. She just _had_ to be insulted too.

"You're _mugging_ me?" she said aloud slowly as if it were far too ludicrous to swallow.

Azula turned then and her gait was not spawned by fear like any other fourteen-year-old girl caught in a dark alley with a number of gruesome thugs. "I'm not really in the mood."

A round of jeers came from the gang. It was the most bizarre reply they had heard yet.

"Well, that really isn't up to _you_ now is it? Hand over all of your money nice and peaceful and we might let you go without a scratch to that lovely face."

Azula shut her lips to silence a sigh from coming forth and as she did she pulled a strip of cloth meant for gardening from the inn's windowsill, wrapped it round a wrist. Three men, tall and burly, wiry and stealthy, circled round her like sharks encircling their prey. The fourth stayed back.

Little did they know _this_ girl was no prey.

"Hand over that satchel, girly," said one with several missing teeth, cracking his knuckles threateningly.

"Hey, what's she doing with that cloth?"

"Simple," Azula replied as she knotted the final knot on her wrist and pulled to her back to bind the other wrist to it, "I'm evening the odds. Lucky you, I won't even use my bending either."

"What!?"

"You have some nerve!"

"Let's see," Azula prodded further, seeing the hair on their necks bristle in fury for her arrogance as she addressed them one by one, "_you_ have a face no mother could love so it will be drowning in this flowerbed when this is through. _Your_ teeth are disgusting to the point of offensive so _they'll_ have to go and you other two…hmmm I'm sure I'll dream something up."

When Azula finished listing the horrible things she was going to do to them she flashed a devious smile. "_Well_, what are you waiting for? Strike down this defenseless, little girl…if you _can_."

She'd insulted them as much as their thresholds could take. The first one broke off from the circle and charged like a roaring bull.

Azula didn't move an inch from where she stood even with her wrists bound and a princess's honor not to use her firebending. It was something her brother could never do, in nerve or in skill. She just threw the man a mocking glare as he charged, incensing him further, only replacing her feet at the last second. She swooped down low and flipped the much heavier man onto his back, using his own force against him.

He was down but not out. Azula was only getting started.

She'd taken a quick scrutiny of her surroundings before and made them work for her by picking up with her foot a fallen plank of wood from rotting wall, kicking it between her feet to position how she wanted before sending it slamming into another man's face. The man behind him almost tripped and Azula was glad he didn't. She danced out of his muscled arms and landed a blow to his gut before sending that same knee crashing into his jaw.

Azula brought the fight to the wisest of the four who hadn't yet attacked and didn't seem too inclined to after what he had seen and she thread over the first man she'd felled on the way. Taking down scum was turning out to be fun after all.

The last one was a teenager and the wiriest of the bunch, reminiscent of an alley panther-cat, and so he wasn't a complete loss at stealth. By sheer luck he managed to dodge her first and most deadly blow but could only throw up his arms to block all the blows that came after.

"Coward," Azula hissed and she twirled a tight circle to strike down his unprotected back.

Just when she thought he was much too slow to do nothing the younger man had another impossible stroke of luck by Azula's viewpoint. He caught her foot a second before it would've nailed him square in the chest.

His flabbergasted face was a sight to behold but Azula wasn't distracted.

"_Big_ man," she teased as her leg was held captive in the air but it wasn't like that for long. Her other leg came up so fast so fast he never saw it coming, never knew that her gymnastics was so advanced that she could pull off such a feat.

The gang lay beaten and bruised in Azula's wake. The one that looked the closest to rising she still owed a promise. She worked out of the binds on her wrists. She hauled him up by the hair, dragged him to the flowerbed and dunked his head right in.

Even as he groaned the bulky man tried to get back out.

"Oh not too soon," Azula came back as she relieved him of the coin purse at his waist. "This is a good look for you."

He thought he was safe as she moved away but she smacked foot into the small of his back, not because he wasn't beaten through and through but just because she could.

Azula clapped her hands to get their attentions off their sore bodies and sorer egos. "Inns require coins, gentleman."

She didn't need to say anything else. At once the men scrambled for their purses and threw them at her feet all for if she'd leave them in peace since she could unleash plenty more on them even with two legs alone.

Azula dropped the four purses into her satchel better off than she had started but that was only to be expected.

"_Such_ a hospitable welcome into your village," she said as she walked away. "Many thanks."

The older three of the gang grumbled and groaned and tried to get up, maybe tried not to at their worst defeat in living memory, the thought of having to return home beaten and penniless prime on their minds. Even as the wiry youth nursed the blow to his head that was sure to swell up something terrible his mindset was not in the same as his comrades.

"_Wow_," he breathed in awe as the girl's slight, white form disappeared round the bend.

Though she may have picked herself up some peasant money it didn't get Azula any closer to finding a place to stay that night. Though the people of the Fire Nation may have dropped to their feet at her very presence the same couldn't be said of the very solid wooden door of the inn.

She glared at it a while as the cogs in her mind ticked to think of a plan.

The key appeared right before her eyes.

"Uh…hey," stammered the wiry boy from the back alley and he held himself with an obvious limp. "I was just thinking uh…my dad owns this inn…they don't know I sneak out to try and gamble for a bundle, I'm not a part of that gang you know and – and you don't seem to have a place to stay and…"

Azula didn't care to hear the rest of his pointless rambling. What held interest to her she swiped from his hand and turned the lock.

With one door down she pushed the key back into his hand and held her palm out for a second.

"Used to getting what you want I take it?"

"Keep your money," she said, tossing it back to him, not really caring if he had the reflexes to catch it. "I don't really need it. Yours is the smallest of the lot after all."

She supposed the dark was a good thing for the inn as she could hear the scurry of insects even if she couldn't see them.

"Eh, heh, you noticed that huh?" the teen said, rubbing the back of his neck in the highly uncomfortable aura she produced. "My name's Hikaru. If you're going to be staying here Dad asks that you keep your room tidy, your payment prompt, and the noise level to a minimum. Also no pets and _hey-!_"

Already Azula had blown him off again and was stepping up the first step of stairs, having helped herself to a room key.

"No wait!" Hikaru gasped as she set a hand to the handrail to hold off some of her weight. Quite forgetting the deadly opponent whose blows he was still recovering from he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back just as the rail gave a dangerous lurch.

"Plenty of guests have fallen flat on their noses," he sighed. "Never to return."

Azula stood straight and still even after he'd spared her from a nasty tumble, an unexpected disaster she might've been unable to meet in her fatigue and sickness. She said and did nothing and in her silence Hikaru wondered why.

He saw with a jolt that his hand was still locked over her wrist.

"Oh, sorry! Didn't mean anything by that, I just-!"

"Take it off or I _break_ it off."

Hikaru's hand flew off her like it was red-hot coal, not doubting for a second that she would really do it. Even then he didn't retreat to his room in fear like a lesser one of his buddies might have. "There're other places to watch out for up there. Do you need a lantern? I could get you a-"

Before he'd even finished a plume of flame sprouted from Azula's palm.

"Goodnight then umm…?"

"Aki," Azula returned with an unhidden tire in her tone, the simple name the first she could think of.


	3. Chapter 3

Mmmm, if you guys are ever in the Twin Cities you've _got _to go to Sebastian Joe's Ice Cream. I just went and that stuff's ambrosia, man! Me and my demanding sweet tooth. Hee hee. On to the story!

Arual-san

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With the hard work of maintaining an inn and all that came with it the Tamari family was up when the first crack of sun spilled over the land. The two youngest, a boy and a girl, worked on small odds and ends from the patrons in sewing torn clothing, repairing weapons, to earn some pocket change. The mother fixed breakfast with another baby in a sling over her front and the father reviewed his scrolls for the upkeep of his business.

"Hikaru!" the mother called when her eldest hadn't arrived. "You lazy boy, get in here!"

Had he been a boy from an upper class family that need not have worried about maintaining their lifestyle the teen could've afforded a chance to sleep in the way that adolescent stage so longed for. The innkeeper's wife prepared to call again but before she could Hikaru burst into the kitchen all at once so that she nearly dropped her cooking spoon.

" 'Morning, everybody!" he burst out with as much rush as his entrance. "Nice day? Nice day, isn't it?"

"Brother's acting silly," giggled the sister as she saw that it wasn't only his unusual rush of adrenaline so early in the morning but the haphazard way he'd put himself together: his shirt askew, his hair with a cowlick, and bearing only one sock. A heavy backpack of pre-packed supplies was on his back and in his haste to leave all that weight fell to only one shoulder strap which he supported with one hand. He held a shovel in his other.

Rather than sit down with them like he did any other morning Hikaru went straight for the easiest, most portable meal. Out of hands, he chomped down on that apple but was back into a run a second after.

"I thought you locked the saké cabinet, Dad," the younger brother said reproachfully though he enjoyed the scene as much as his sister.

"Are you all right, dear?" Mrs. Tamari felt she had to ask in good conscious. Her son of course couldn't answer with an apple stuffed in his mouth but his eyes shone bright with a happiness far too nerve-wracking of him to be genuine.

"Someone checked in within the first hours of morning today?" Mr. Tamari commented through his look through the scrolls, plenty used to his son's eccentrics. That his father had noticed so quickly sent Hikaru's eyes, before shining fake-happy and nerves, bugging wide and overloading any other emotion that could be stuffed into them. He was out the back door and gone before anyone could question him further.

"But his shift doesn't begin for another two hours," fretted Mrs. Tamari, only sitting down to her own breakfast when everyone else was served.

"_Puberty_," Mr. Tamari assumed, looking back to his scrolls. He shoveled some more eggs into his mouth. "Aki, is it? All alone, no last name, rather odd don't you-?"

"Breakfast!" came an irritated voice from up the stairs.

The family all lifted their heads. Was she serious? They didn't serve breakfast at their inn, nor did any of their relatives who were in the same trade in other Fire Nation villages.

The two younger ones seemed to pick up on in that one word what had sent Hikaru running and hurried to finish and start their chores.

Upstairs in the dingy room she'd been provided Azula was absorbed in the stacks of stolen coins before her eyes, analyzing how life must be lived as a peasant who needed such things as money. She was already irritated when she couldn't at once boil everything down to one answer and the empty stomach only irritated her further. She'd actually out had to call for her breakfast and more than once.

The money…Azula had sorted it out by color: gold, silver, bronze. She'd never used it a day in her life.

"Hmmm," Azula murmured, staring it down as if to wrought answers from its metal. From what she knew of weaponry gold was a soft metal to work with and thus a fool's metal. It was the most brilliantly colored of the lot, true, suitable for decoration and royal headpieces, and though coins did not have to temper the same scratches and cuts as swords, passed from hand to hand, they must suffer quite a bit of abuse.

Azula concluded that with its inferior structure that gold was the weakest and therefore least valuable of the three, that gold couldn't withstand much abuse and had to be replaced on a regular basis. The golden headpiece tucked away in her satchel was only valuable because of its rich history, that anything that touched a royal head instantly became priceless. Her beliefs were further confirmed at the gold piece's low ranking of ten while silver was five and bronze was number one. They had been lousy thieves after all.

How was she to know its true value and that the "gold" pieces were a hybrid with only a percentage of the precious metal?

Breakfast still hadn't arrived and Azula almost marveled at the audacity of her hosts when a small bit of her annoyance back home could've sent a servant to the streets. Did she really have to go retrieve it herself? Where was that innkeeper's son that had let her in?

She could've sworn she'd heard something downstairs but when she went down to check the kitchen was deserted. No hot meal awaited her and it was the first trace of evidence that she most certainly wasn't a princess here.

Her purse jingled at her waist, heavy with coins. A till was at the front desk and she dumped a stack of the gold into it, figuring the weak metal had to be good for at least a day's stay. She lost another large share to her breakfast on deducing that an equal exchange between coins and food would be an equal weight. Azula had thought she'd been stiffing the vendor a few coins. She'd made a fatal error in misreading Mai and it came up again in her misjudging the vendor's stunned look. She could analyze, manipulate, and control a person's psyche but she couldn't relate to their unique perspective and put herself in their shoes. It was a flaw in her much larger than she ever gave credit to. That, coupled with her less than warm personality, resulted in her being down to her last few coins after purchasing new clothing to replace what she had lost.

She decided the life of a peasant was a pitiful one indeed.

She could always find and beat up on that gang again for money, maybe with a blindfold this time for a slightest bit of a challenge she knew she'd never find in such a village. Thinking about that, a similar conversation behind caught her interest. The gang she'd beaten was apparently a rough crowd by the town's standards and they claimed to have been beaten up by a big, heavily muscled man last night.

"Heh," Azula scoffed as she listened on.

People nearby enough cowered over the new threat and herded their children close but still the men continued to discuss it. A small degree of Azula's arrogance was washed away when she turned and saw that they were Fire Nation soldiers.

They were low-ranking foot soldiers but still she turned back quickly in case they recognized her face from the assembly boasting the Avatar's defeat and the prince's short-lived return. If they saw her for who she was they would bring others, wave after wave until she inevitably lost her stamina, until she was captured like a common criminal.

If Azula had thought she'd needed to keep a low profile before she was assured of that now. Robbing that gang again was now out of the question, not when there was already the possibility that they could rat her out.

She let the soldiers pass her by and she took a bite from her nashi pear. She'd felt slightly better from the few hours sleep she'd gotten but still felt around 70% as opposed to her usual 110. How long did these "cold" things last?

What exactly did normal people do for money anyway? She pondered that thought as she strolled the town eating her breakfast. All around were people making their living selling their wares of goods and produce.

For convenience, when Azula had eaten her pear down to the pips, she decided the place before her was the place she would have her temporary job.

In dramatic irony it just so happened to be a tea shop. Oh if her fuddy-duddy Uncle could see her now…

There was a young teen leaning on its outer walls and wearing a ratty apron and there Azula saw her chance. "Ill-fitting glasses and looking twenty pounds underweight," said Azula, ticking off his traits like she knew them well. "You must be the one."

"Pardon?"

Azula lied with no shame, "I've been sent as a messenger to inform you that your father has been taken prisoner by the Earth Kingdom rebels. Little to no chance of rescue I'm afraid. You might want to make arrangements with your dear mother before she falls apart."

The poor boy's bony face went white with grief at the dreadful news she'd delivered. He was off in a flash. So great was his need to get back home that he never thought to ask for the credentials that Azula couldn't give.

"Sucker," Azula muttered. She entered the shop now that a position had just opened up.

"That geek out there said he never wants to work here again and a mass of other angry things I can't repeat back," she informed the first person she saw, a manager type. "Works out rather well for you since I require a job. When do I get paid?"

It took a few moments for the assistant manager to process everything, that and the haughty way it was addressed. He had a doughy sort of build that would've fit in more in a sweet shop and his chest swelled like an overweight peacock for his work.

"We're slow right now so I could give you an interview."

"What ever for?" Azula asked though she still sat at the spot across from him.

"To make sure that you're Indigo Tea material!" he piped up with excessive pep, probably having said it hundreds of times previously but to him it never lost its charm. "We pride ourselves on maintaining an upbeat, positive attitude and giving 100% customer satisfaction at all times. There are hundreds of varieties of tea, black, white, green, and our employees can pull up facts in a snap. Tell me, Miss…?"

"Aki."

"Ms. Aki, just _how_ much do you like tea?"

"_Madly_," Azula replied in overwhelming boredom though only a few seconds had passed. She'd easily take a two hour long war meeting voiced by the decaying old general who paused every five minutes in a hacking fit over _this_ nimrod.

"Do you have any previous experience working in the wonderful world of tea?"

"_No_," Azula said, Agni forbid.

"Any references? Any convictions in any region of the nation?"

"No and no."

The assistant manager hadn't had a positive outcome from the get go and he wasn't disappointed. "I'm sorry, young lady, you're just not what we're-"

"Not so quick there," Azula cut in before he could finish and direct her back to the door. "You just haven't been asking the right questions. All and all there is really only one that you need to ask." He didn't possess the nerve few had to question her what but she proceeded, "The question you really ought to ask is actually to yourself, not me. This is such a rough town, full of thugs, _anything_ could happen. You can lock your little apartment up tight, bolt every window but there is always the chance-" – she slowed down, knowing just how to build the tension and make him squirm – "that all of it will come undone the second…you close…your _eyes_…"

"You know the question?"

He gulped, unable to answer.

"If you show me that door…" she threatened lowly with the greatest of ease, "is there any guarantee that you will be safe tonight?"

"W-welcome to Indigo Tea!" the young man stammered out at once and any trace of his former pompous authority was gone as he scrambled to go fetch her an apron. He laid one out before her but Azula snubbed it, saying that she preferred blue strings when she truly didn't care.

The assistant manager came back with her requested apron with a lowered head, recognizing her as his superior even in an environment where he was the more knowledgeable. It gave Azula some comfort to be revered as she ought to be even by one as insignificant as he.

"Ami will be your trainer," the assistant manager blurted out in a rush, desperate to be free of her. "Ami! In here once you're free please!" He got back to Azula. "You can report back to the boss for your payment uh…_soon_."

Azula tied the apron around her waist. She knew who she was; wearing that ratty apron or as little as her pajamas only previously would change nothing. She carried herself with pride. One would never have been able to tell that she was still sick.

The place was modest as tea shops went and Azula was no expert. A few amateur calligraphy scrolls, probably painted by the staff, were on the walls and eight wooden tables lined the floors.

"Good morning, fellow waitress!" The girl Ami could've been a double of Ty Lee (if there hadn't been so many doubles of her already). She was a pretty, popular, full of pep to the point of bursting, handing out those good feelings all for free.

Ty Lee had been a source of cheer that was impossible not to like. Though Ami was basically the same person all Azula could feel was bitterness.

"We get to be gal pals today," Ami beamed, delighted to make a new acquaintance. "Ami and Aki, that's so cute! I'll show you everything you'd ever want to know about tea and how to get the best tips. Just don't go outdoing me on the pretty face now!" She giggled at her own joke. "Two orders Jasmine, two Oolong, and three of today's special floral blend please."

Azula left back to the counter in back but the finished teas weren't there waiting for her. It was a simple business though, all she had to do follow the labels of amounts and seeping time. Before she could get back Ami made a hand gesture that Azula soon learned was a nod to get the puffy buns while the customers waited, a different signal for azuki bean filling, plum sauce, custard, or cream.

With her bending she need not have bothered to search for oven mitts.

"Who are you!?" a screechy voice demanded and Azula moved her tray aside to see a short and plump old woman below who had nearly plowed right into her. "You burn your hands like that and you're fired! I don't need any slow workers!"

Azula removed a hand from the red-hot tray. She jiggled her fingers to show it was unharmed.

"A smart aleck, eh? Move over, get back on the floor!"

Azula didn't know anything about the sad little wretch she'd found herself employed to, just that if Azula had her way she could get that boss under her thumb as effortlessly as she had overpowered Long Feng. The silly shop with its silly drinks would be hers by now if she didn't have to lay low.

As soon as she was well she could go home. She wouldn't face the Fire Lord after disobeying him without being in top form.

The seven orders of tea seeped their different times on the counter while Azula came with the buns ordered for each table. It was a good system, Ami charmed the customers and Azula retrieved their orders but then rush hour started and they both had to go solo, the only two waitresses in the shop. The boss stayed in the back keeping tabs and the assistant manager rung up bills.

One Mudan White, a Pur Er, three deep-steamed Senchas, two Genmaichas, and a strange Peppermint flavor Azula recorded rapidly on her memo scroll. She'd never had to write so fast before and the people were always adjusting orders.

Charming the customers was out of the question, just recording their orders right, making sure they got to the right tables was enough. It didn't help the noise level when a large group of farmers came in all at once, overcrowding one poor little table past its maximum, or when a group of schoolchildren followed shortly after.

"Hang on, I think chamomile gets my skin all puffy," a little boy said and he ran across the shop for his dad to confirm it so.

Azula could only wait a few seconds before she had to pick up the hordes of other orders around the house. The tea had to be steeped to its perfect consistency. That could be tough to time down to the second but some people weren't happy regardless.

The noise pounded in her ears; she hadn't had a break to sit down or eat since breakfast and after so many hours it began to show. All the buns looked the same on the outside so a few people cried out in disgust at biting down on a flavor they hadn't asked for. Azula was precise in her movements but still small dashes of leaves fell to floor instead of into the diffusers, earning her screeches from the boss that made her head ache. The floor seemed to jump when she walked, things close up went blurry. She kept telling herself it was only a few more hours…

At the kid's table a crack reached her ears.

She glared that way; a couple preteens and a set of twins caught it and ducked under the table for cover.

"The _tea's_ too hot," Azula scowled to herself, repeating a customer, bringing back a perfectly good matcha to brew it again. He could've blown on it, he could've given it a minute but he had sent her back to get a new one.

She was tempted to bring the cup's temperature up to scalding levels and give it back.

Azula was losing her focus and her energy and it showed, not just to the customers who wanted their tea, but to Ami as well who, only with much practice, could spare a few seconds from her tables. She might've flashed an encouraging smile to the underdog new co-worker but that was until she realized that Azula wasn't the underdog at all to the male customers despite her increasing frequency of mistakes.

Azula's was a new face, a pretty one that was getting more attention than Ami.

Suddenly Ami wasn't another Ty Lee anymore. Her face curled back into itself, turning that polished face very ugly.

Any other time Azula would've caught that seconds-long look, would've known what to expect and just what to do to counter but as the two girls passed the other Ami's foot came crashing into Azula's shin, the dirty deed hidden by the trays they held.

Azula had only just become aware that she'd been hit and then she was face first in the tray on the ground.

"I don't have to pay for that wrecked tea, do I?" an unsympathetic patron asked.

"You worthless twit!" growled the boss, having seen the whole thing, as she spoke deducing it from Azula's wage. "Take a break and get your act together! The stock boy will fill in better than you! Stock boy!"

Taking a pass at Ami would've made the dispute between them obvious. Azula was too concerned elsewhere. She didn't want to look at the moving floor that made her dizzy but had to do so to see where she was going. How long had she been doing this? How many teas had she tried to identify by color and smell alone? She'd lost count.

An hour passed and the crowd lessened. Despite that it was a small town it was a very hot spot regardless of age or status. The boss went back to get her and with a growl of disgust found Azula unintentionally passed out over the table.

"Chuck her," the old woman growled without an ounce of pity.

The assistant manager was happy to comply. He and the stock boy lifted her up and past their street where their customers couldn't see; Ami smiled a satisfied smile that she was the shop's sweetie once again. They dropped Azula off in an alley, dropped the coins she'd earned after. It wasn't their fault if some thief relieved her of those hard-earned coins during her little nap.

She laid there for more than an hour, forgotten in a ditch.

"Hey!" a young voice called out as the sun began to set, followed by that person dropping to the ground.

It could easily be seen that Azula wasn't drunk. As formidable as she was awake she was as helpless as anyone else in a fever-induced sleep. There was room in the small family's wagon when bags of feed and baskets of vegetables could be moved aside and that was just what the lone mother did despite that with her slight frame she was no bigger than the teenager she carried.

The woman pulled her shawl around her face for the cold and led the ostrich-horse onward.

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Tamari is actually my favorite brand of Soy Sauce – I'm stuck making Fire Nation names sound different from Earth Kingdom names so I just pull up stuff randomly. :P

"I don't have to pay for that wrecked tea, do I?" is actually a play off of some jerk customer my sister had when she was working at Bruegger's Bagels. Rachel sliced her finger open cutting a bagel and the customer asks if she still had to get that blood-soaked bagel. Ugh! Some people!

Please Read and Review! Makes me churn out new chapters faster!


	4. Chapter 4

Azula had thought she'd only closed her eyes for a few moments on that table, she thought she still had two more miserable hours to go putting up with noisy, complaining customers and a jealous co-worker but when Azula awoke she didn't find herself in that tea shop. She'd woken with little fuss, no startling awake or anything of the sort, just the simple parting of her eyes. Azula had been tucked into a futon and laid on the floor; a cold compress had been laid over her forehead and so not to jar the comforting thing from place she inspected her environment with the same subtle curiosity.

It was a modest little home Azula had wound up in, the room she was in not even closed off from the main body, like an inlet had it been a body of water. A rice paper folding screen served as a makeshift wall for privacy but past that Azula could still pick out a few things peasants were likely to own and that didn't surprise her but one thing puzzled even her. Azula squint at it, unsure if the fever was distorting things, but it didn't become any clearer. The closest she could gauge was that it was a great lumpy boulder but instead of moss it was afflicted with some kind of fuzzy growth.

"What…?"

Looking at it closer made the cold compress slide to the floor.

"She's awake! She's awake!"

Where she'd been focused on the one side of the screen Azula's attention flashed to the other as two little girls clamored over the other to be first past the screens. It was such a jumble of little legs and feet to get in that it took Azula a moment longer to see that they were twins.

They knelt down beside her, the faster one with the nearer seat.

"Hi!" the first one to reach her exclaimed. "We're so glad you're okay! We didn't know what was the matter when you were out in the street like that but Mommy, Mommy said-"

"Mommy said that we should be good sam…sammat-…" the second girl struggled over with her tongue but Azula gave her no help, "uh good _people_ and help you out. Mom's a good nurse and she's been training us and…"

"And-and Mom's real busy so she gave us a job to take care of you and…"

"_You're_ part of that kiddie group yesterday that broke your teapot," said Azula when she felt like cutting in on them. "Is it really a nurse's place to be going about _breaking_ things?"

Where the two sat side by side their inner eyes hesitantly crawled to meet the other and while they sat so close it could be seen that there was little difference between them to be found. Eight years old, two short bobs of brown hair with two thick braids at either ear, they appeared completely identical as far as looks went and on, seeing as they unconsciously even clenched their knees in the same guilty way.

"That was Shang, not us!" one of them suddenly spoke up when her sister didn't. "He was being a show-off, saying he was such a great bender and that he could suck up all the pot's heat into his little pinkie finger."

"Yeah but Shang was showing off for _you!_ You didn't try to stop him!"

"Why should I get hurt too when he's being a dum-dum?"

"Because he likes you!"

"Shang's such a goof he doesn't know _which_ one of us he likes! He went to all the trouble of getting that rare spider-rose that only grows on the side of cliffs then he gives it to me and he calls me by _your_ name!"

"But-but-" her sister protested for the sake of that boy, "it was sweet anyway. And that teapot was still more your fault than mine!"

"What was _I _supposed to do?"

Thus far Azula had taken the girl's squabbling lying there with only a crease to her face but as the fighting continued that crease deepened and she had to speak her view. "It doesn't matter to me which of you is more responsible."

The girls turned from each other to her. "Really?"

"Really," Azula confirmed but not in understanding, "because you're _both_ a couple of twits."

They were noticeably put out by the put down, shoulders sinking in unison, but that gloom evaporated in a flash when there were so many other things to think about with a new guest in the house. The place hadn't seen guests in years.

"I'm Rika," announced the girl nearer to Azula, the more outspoken of the two.

"My name's Rin," the second said more shyly.

"We look really, _really_ alike but if you ever want to tell us apart you can just look for Rin's birthmark," Rika declared and without warning her poor sister she tugged down on Rin's collar, forcibly unbuttoning the buttons to reveal a fingernail sized brown mark below her collarbone.

"Owie," Rin moaned quietly, rubbing her neck. She was quiet enough that Rika could've easily ignored her but she didn't. She apologized for the rough treatment and helped her sister button up when Rin's attention was on her neck.

"Those are your names? I don't recall ever asking," Azula said snidely, wanting to get back to sleep when this was the alternative but that option wasn't about to become available just like that now that the girls' patient, asleep for so long, was finally awake.

"You're Aki; we heard mean old Ms. Ahibara yelling at you a lot," said one of the girls and Azula didn't bother matching the words to whichever twin had spoken them. It was just a bunch of noise. "So why were you all alone in the street?"

"Your family must be really worried about you, Aki. We can go to the inn and tell them where you are."

Azula was silent and not because she couldn't come up with another snappy answer to make them leave her be. It wasn't something that could be let go just like that and even though Azula still radiated a sense of intimidation even now when she was tired and not really trying the girls still pressed her.

"I'm here alone," she put simply but when the girls exchanged odd glances she made up on the spot for the sake of appearances that her family was part of a caravan and they'd been accidentally separated.

"_Oh_," piped Rin, scrunching her little body into itself in great sympathy, "it must've been so scary getting left behind."

"You must be really strong, getting through the wilderness out here," said Rika, wide-eyed at the claim. "A lot of our messengers have to go to Mommy's clinic after wild animal attacks. What happened? Are you going to meet up with them somewhere?"

Azula dearly wanted to sigh but knew well how to maintain a lie. She was usually up for the challenge but not now, not with what it concerned. "I was…catching fish in the rapids of a river but my perch wasn't the best place to do so."

"You slipped on the stone?"

"No," Azula came back, very nearly insulted, "because I wasn't on a stone for that very reason. Soles can slip and the water would chill bare feet. I found a dam of reeds to step on but one of those reeds had a weak spot I couldn't have foreseen."

The two were completely rapt with the lies she spun. "You got carried away by the current?"

"You got one right." Azula rolled her eyes. "Being able to swim or not matters little in a current that strong. I don't know how long it carried me along before it became mild enough to swim ashore. I only need to keep on course with where my caravan was heading and-"

Azula's train of thought slipped when her eyes flicked back to the twins.

The furry, tawny-colored boulder had somehow materialized between the two.

What the strange thing was had been a passing fancy before, now that it was so close and she still couldn't identify it from all her studies she was slowly becoming annoyed. "What is _that?_"

"What's what?" chimed the girls, smiling as they waited for her to continue.

"That thing…sitting between you." What else would she be talking about?

Rin and Rika looked from her to the thing Azula described and their little faces broke out in an identical set of giddy grins. Biting her lip to hold back giggles, one of them gently poked the wad of fur.

The shapeless lump wiggled but in seconds went still.

The girls kept back giggles still as if it were a private joke only understood in their own private twin world. Azula stared through slanted eyes as the little game continued, as the lump wiggled more and more, as strange 'whump' sounds started to follow.

Azula rose a single eyebrow as a head emerged from somewhere in the ball of fur and long, floppy ears poured out from it. The animal gave a yawn so wide it could've swallowed its newly found head.

"Pukka's our pet bunny," said Rin like he was more of a favorite than any toy could ever be. "We're not sure 'zactly what kind of breed he is. A long, long time ago when Rika and I were just little babies on backpacks Daddy saved him when he got lost from his family um…just like you." She realized it might not have been the best way to phrase it but was determined to end on a high note. "Pukka plays with us _all_ the time!"

"He's a memory of Daddy until Daddy comes back from the war."

"Hmm…" Azula mumbled though it wasn't really a response. Her eyebrow remained raised throughout her critical stare of the weird animal much larger than any other rabbit she'd read about. A person would have been scared stiff but the rabbit seemed unaffected.

"So anyway," Rika picked up again since they'd gotten off track, "Mommy says you need bed rest. You can't just go walking off an icky fever like you did in that tea shop, you'll just make it worse."

Azula took in the information. Of course she – no, she wouldn't even imagine herself that low – if a soldier were to break a leg he couldn't just walk it off and deal like with another injury. She would defeat this cold by passively sleeping through it rather than fighting and overcoming it? She'd fought and overcome the initial illness, the one that could've killed her, hadn't she?

"We have chores and school but we'll help you get better real fast, won't we, Rin?"

Rin gave a firm nod. "We'll get you back to your caravan in time before you miss it."

The girls had taken up so much time chatting away about whatever they could that by the time they remembered lunch it was mostly cold. Cold, unevenly cooked rice that on one side crunched because patches of the grain had been half cooked, that crunched on the other side for being burned. Everything in between was a mushy mess but Azula was hungry, not having eaten in several hours, so she just gulped it down her share without tasting most of the awful texture.

All of this had started after the war meeting when she'd first learned of her mother's date for execution, when she'd disobeyed her father's will and made the turn in the palace halls to where the war balloons lay instead of the troop she was to lead. She couldn't help but wonder how far it would go.

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Read and Review and all that jazz!


	5. Chapter 5

I've been AWOL forever I know. Busy, writer's block, a slew of other excuses…but I still hope to finish this story if my readers out there still hope to read it. Got bits and pieces of a possible continuation with the Aang Gang but don't know if I'll put that into an alternate finale ('cuz the original was unbelievably sweet) or make a little ficlet. All depends...

It's my birthday tomorrow! May Day! Sweet! I'm not telling you how old I'm turning though. With my baby face no one would believe me anyway! XD

Arual-san

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The dark of night that crept over all that lay within the palace and made those barely viewable tables, tapestries and vases all the more looming to one not yet grown to the scale of the palace but the trill of sneaking through those quiet, empty halls when her nurses would punish her good urged Azula on.

In the dark and the quiet the palace was so much larger, eerier, like she was in a different world but to this six-year-old it was a game and a fun one at that.

It was too easy, creeping in and out of the shadows cast by the furniture her little body could hide behind. The guards rounding the halls thought they heard or saw something a couple times but as she lay in wait Azula thought not of the fear of getting caught or the punishment that would lay after but only how to improve herself to be more like the shadows she lay hidden in and blend into the night.

The guard she was currently waiting on scratched his head, looking around. As she'd darted behind a vase Azula had misplaced several of the fibers on an ornate rug that took up a fourth of a hallway. The man wondered if he had done that himself.

It could have happened when any multitude of the people had come through the heavily-used hallway earlier in the day or even through a brush of the wind. The guard straightened the fibers to perfection and continued his patrol.

Next time Azula wouldn't be so careless.

She waited in her hiding place until the guard rounded the corner and dashed to the door of her destination, swiftly turned it and slipped inside.

The vast bedroom was as large and dark as everything she had passed so far but she focused only on the vast bed and blanketing that nearly swallowed the boy that lay sleeping on it.

Azula smirked and shut the door as quietly as she'd opened it.

When he was awake Zuko was plenty susceptible to her whims but however easy he was to control he was all that more vulnerable in his sleep and Azula wouldn't be hasty after the sneaky route she'd taken getting there.

The eight-year-old boy snorted about something in his dreams, was about to turn over when he felt a hand clamp over his mouth.

Zuko's eyes shot open at once, fearing his mother's talk of assassins, was about to scream…

"It's only me, Zuzu," Azula said in amusement, her eyes flickering mischievously. "Lucky you."

She removed her little hand away and as she did Zuko's newly awakened conscious processed that he should've expected as much from the little fingers. As much as she teased him, tested him, they were with each other more than anyone else.

"You're not a baby anymore," Zuko said gruffly, but he didn't pull away, get back to sleep like he wanted to, "so stop using baby names, Azula."

"Be _nice_ to me," she answered plainly, "I'm your sister. I was just out on a little romp testing out your guards. They're not very good, are they? If I was one of those bad guys that Mommy always talks about-"

"Your size had a big part I'm sure. There's no such thing as a six-year-old assassin."

That elicited a little giggle out of the girl. Not about to get any sleep with her there, Zuko sat up, looked down to her. "What are you _doing_ here anyway? I was sleeping!"

"Were you dreaming about _Mai?_"

His face colored, completely awake now. "No!"

"Get your shoes," Azula instructed, already on to her plan, "_we're_ going out where all our stuffy teachers can't boss us around. It'll be fun!"

The boy grumbled. "I don't _want_ to. My teacher's making me get up early to work on a bending move I keep messing up on. It's just one move, I don't see why he can't just let up and-"

"Whine, whine, boo-hoo," Azula cut in like she was finishing his sentence in those few simple words. "Besides you _have_ to come, Zuko, now that I told you about my plan." She put on an innocent face. "I'm small and you're big and you have to look out for me."

"Hmmph! I'll look after you by telling Mom!"

A side of her lips rose into a grin. "You're too clumsy to get through the palace like I just did and tell her. You'll get caught and I'll get caught and we'll both be stuck writing lines for an hour and you know it."

She had him trapped. He knew it and he banged his head back against the headrest as Azula hurriedly crammed the shoes on his feet to get them moving faster. Soon enough their little feet were moving along the rooftops where no guards patrolled.

The wind was cool and refreshing as Azula sped along so high above the ground she could've been flying but where Zuko trailed behind her he looked nervously to his every step, not enjoying himself at all.

"Stinker!" Azula called out behind her. She sped up faster and raised her arms to be more like the bird she felt like.

"Hey!" called Zuko back. He didn't want to but he sped up as she did to catch up. His legs were longer and stronger for the two years he had on her but still she was a quick little thing and the space between them was wide.

Azula darted from place to place, swinging up to the higher roofs of the pagoda and back down again, and he could never catch her. She was off running again, looking behind to him with a challenge that for a few moments her mind was off the path ahead.

Zuko noticed first that she'd come to an edge. "Look out!"

Her neck snapped forward; she'd thought she'd had a few more steps until she'd reached the edge but it was too late to stop and slow down now. Frightened, Zuko tried for her but it was too late…and Azula didn't need it.

She didn't panic when her feet left solid ground but leapt like a cat onto the roof of the outer wall. She kept running when Zuko lay behind wide-eyed like his heart had stopped.

"Come on, Zuko, catch me!" she called when her brother looked frozen to the spot at crossing that gap when the ground was twenty feet below. She ran and she looked beyond the borders of the palace to a full view of the volcanic rock that encased the city, the first she'd ever seen of it.

Volcanic soil was fertile, there had to be a tree or something she could…

The gap hadn't gotten her but just then a loose tile did. She lost her footing and gave a scream when she felt herself slide.

Zuko grabbed her hand just as she slid over the edge but Azula hadn't the negative thoughts that he'd actually crossed the gap or that he was quick enough to catch her.

"Pull me up! Pull me up!" she screamed at him, afraid.

His mind was on nothing else as he struggled to do just that but he hadn't the training to be able to stand holding the whole of her weight. Zuko couldn't hold her long when both their hands began to slip with sweat. He couldn't afford to spare one hand to grip the roof and steady them both so he just struggled to walk backward.

The tiles under Zuko's feet slipped, weak as their sibling that Azula had slipped on, but he pulled and pulled until he had at least gotten Azula up to her shoulders. He pivoted a foot, compromising his stance even more for a safe place on the tiles to move her.

Zuko found a safe set of tiles and hooked her into its groove but the sequence of tiles that had already slid reached the ones he stood on. He fell down, down, down into that black night over the palace walls and Azula could only watch as he screamed all the way down.

She snapped her eyes shut but it didn't shut out a horrible crack.

The ground was so very far down, she could've pulled herself up but Azula snapped her eyes shut again and let go. She landed on her feet, which absorbed some of the shock, but still her legs fell out from under her at the intense pressure on her knees.

Her brother was sprawled out on the ground, cradling his wrist close and straining not to cry.

"Zuko! Zuko!" She was over him at once. Seeing him baby his wrist as he did, she grabbed at it. "Does it hurt?"

"_Owww! Owww!_" He pulled away fiercely. "_YES!_"

"T-the nurses pop them back into place!" she stuttered at seeing him in such pain. Her pranks never went that far. "I can just pop it back in and-!"

"W-won't work," he seethed through his teeth. "It's broken…think o-other stuff might be too."

"I'm sorry! _I'm sorry!_" she shrilled as if saying that would make it go away. Even as little as she was the words from her were rare.

Zuko moaned and writhed on the ground and Azula spared a glance to all the other inferior manors that bordered the palace. It was not how she'd thought their first momentous time outside the walls would turn out.

And that was it. They couldn't hide his injuries in the few hours until morning arrived.

Her little feet rushed to the palace doors and she started banging away for the guards to let them back in. The bangs echoed like drum roll even when she had left the doors to get back to her brother. Azula had cared back then that Zuko was hurting, she'd even propped his head up on her lap.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"They'll fix you! They'll fix you!" the little girl repeated both for him and for herself. "Just like Keiko, just like our duck."

BANG! BANG! BANG!

She remembered how his little face was scrunched up and red, trying to hold it back though he had every right to complain since it was her fault that they out there in the first place.

Back then Zuko had taken the broken bones that should have been hers.

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BANG! BANG! BANG!

Azula's eyes split open in annoyance when she found that the noise wasn't the bang of the palace doors at all but the sound of wood against metal: a spoon against a cooking pan, the sound of a woman calling out that breakfast was ready.

It came flooding back to her that she'd been taken in by peasants and being waited on by child nursemaids she couldn't tell apart. The fever must have been to blame for her temporary lapse of memory and that ridiculous dream that was a whole other life ago.

"Zuko…" she thought aloud as the details of that old memory rapidly faded away. Her expression was mixed, seeing that look of pain across his face, pain because of her, and she was glad to see the image go. What had possessed her mind to bring that up she didn't know.

"You were always such a loser," she hissed into her pillow.

"Good morning, Aki!" beamed the first of the twins as she burst into the space with a full plate for their guest.

"Meet our mommy!" said the other, pulling back the bamboo separator to let in a stinging burst of sunlight. It wasn't even a real room the poor peasants had for her, just an oblong nook in the wall! Of course she wasn't in the palace! Of course she wasn't still six-years-old! A slew of bad decisions had wound her up in _this_ place!

Azula hissed at the rude awakening and as her eyes adjusted she made out a petite young mother working away over a hot stove. The woman was plain but pleasant-looking as she gave her guest a nod of acknowledgment. Her attention then focused only on the meat over the grill so as to not burn it even as her free hand almost unconsciously reached for a couple of eggs.

As she waited for the pink to disappear on the meat she speedily turned the eggs round and round the other in her palm, never slowing, never cracking them and hardly noticing them until the meat was done.

With one fluid movement she slid the eggs round the edge of the pan's edge, cracking them open without leaving a fragment behind. Azula watched as the little girls chattered away at either side until the woman came to sit with them with three more plates.

"My name is Rahna," she said, passing a plate to her daughters' bare laps. "Welcome to our home."

"What were you dreaming about, Aki?" one of the twins asked and Azula realized then just how close she was. "You were running around and gasping and stuff. Was it scary?"

Azula's look of embarrassment quickly morphed into one of indignation. For an answer she shoved away the twin who was too close for comfort, spilling some of the food off that girl's plate.

"Don't pry, Rika," said the mother but with her quick, egg-rolling hands she snatched a portion of eggs from Azula's plate to Rika's to replace what Azula had spilt and ruined.

Rika may have been rude in asking but as leader of the house Rahna had the right to divvy punishment when Azula was rude back.

Azula's face creased and she found herself disliking restraint more and more each time she had to use it. She had lost some of her breakfast because of that snoopy brat. She wasn't about to lose anymore so started on her plate without wishing a good morning back.

"I have a very full schedule in the village so you won't be seeing me very often," Rahna informed as her girls picked pieces off their meals to feed to their huge rabbit. On closer inspection Azula saw that those hands that were so dexterous in egg-spinning were strong and rough like a man's, very out of place and strange on her petite frame. "If you need anything ask one of the girls."

"We're going to be gone at school for a few hours," a twin stated, holding up Pukka against her little chest like an oversized infant.

"But Mommy still expects you to behave and take it easy 'til we get back," said the other girl as she tried spoon feeding their pet when they were one parent short of being able to have a baby brother or sister. "Come on, Pukka, you _like_ tofu."

"I don't know _why_," the twin holding him said as the rabbit pulled away. "Bleck!"

"In the wild rabbits eat lots of different stuff…" the one with the plate trailed off. "Ooo, I know!" She stared the block of food down, concentrated and it burst into flame. "It's different now! It's smoke-flavored!"

"Don't burn the whole plate!" Her sister noticed quickest that the tiny flame wasn't satisfied with just the tofu to burn and was moving on to the bacon. She sifted it away onto the safe place of a few nearby candle wicks.

"You're firebenders," Azula said plainly, only stating a fact, reserving judgment.

"Skipped my generation," mentioned Rahna between bites of egg while the rabbit hopped away in search of other food. "My husband however was quite skilled so it was bound to pass on through his line."

"Hmmm…" She gave no other response.

"Well, we're off!" said the twins, grabbing their book bags and lunchboxes. The mother followed after with her workbag and Azula was left with the place to herself. She'd slept a good ten hours and yet the fever hardly seemed any better.

With the way she'd been jolted out of sleep rather than easing from it Azula didn't see herself being able to take it up again anytime soon…not that she wanted to if it were only to turn into a sequel of her last dream: Zuko getting coddled by their mother for his broken bones, not at all sharing in her punishment that was so much more severe than just writing lines. No thank you.

There was nothing to do. Nothing but stare at the ceiling and think.


End file.
